Audiences hate ‘Runner Runner,’ too

When we last left “Runner Runner,” things weren’t looking good. The critics were lambasting the movie, which also had the misfortune to open against “Gravity,” a better-publicized flick that was receiving almost unanimous praise.

It didn’t seem that things could get any worse. They did.

Starring Ben Affleck as an online gambling tycoon and Justin Timberlake as a Princeton student who thinks he has been cheated by Affleck’s website, “Runner Runner” bombed at the box office. Its estimated opening-weekend take of $7.6 million cracked the Top 20 of worst box-office performances for a movie of its, uh, stature (it’s 15th, sandwiched between two 2011 turkeys, “Mars Needs Moms” and “Fright Night,” among movies that opened on more than 3,000 screens).

Pointing out that an Affleck/Timberlake movie should have done much, much better, BoxOfficemojo numbers cruncher Ray Subers wrote: “People aren’t going to show up for a movie if it doesn’t look like there’s an interesting story, and “Runner Runner’s” looked as generic as they come. It also didn’t help that the movie was targeting adult audiences—the same ones, in fact, who turned out to ‘Gravity’ in droves.”

Adding insult to injury, he added that the movie had a C score from CinemaScore (an audience-rating grade), which he called “awful.” Audiences, of course, tend to grade easier than critics, because they paid to see the movie and are less likely to admit a mistake.

And as I indicated Thursday, the Tomatometer score plummeted. After initially recording a lousy 22, “Runner Runner” now sits at 8. A single-digit score is a sure ticket to the Worst Movies of 2013 list. And the Top Critics are united in their dislike — all 22 panned it.

My two favorite zingers:

“Here is a film in which a man is covered in chicken fat and thrown into a pit of crocodiles, and you still can barely keep your eyes open” – Rene Rodriguez, Miami Herald.